Feast of St. Anthony
Recently, in a book I was reading, I came across an account of a conversation between a diocesan hermit and a priest friend of his. Apparently, they were in the midst of comparing their two vocations. At one point, the priest said to the hermit, “I’m committed to the diocese and to my bishop. You aren’t accountable to anyone. Must be nice!” The priest added that he had heard that from his own bishop.
Whether or not the priest had really heard that from his bishop, his comment is one example of how the hermit life is not well-understood in today’s Church, even among people who could be expected to know better. This lack of understanding is no surprise, either. Hermits are relatively few in number. Besides, the very nature of their vocation means that their life may not be known except to the few who may know them personally.
However, the Church as a whole has always esteemed the hermit vocation. Here is one typical teaching, from St. John Paul II:
It is a source of joy and hope to witness in our time a new flowering of … men and women hermits, belonging to ancient Orders or new Institutes, or being directly dependent on the Bishop, bear[ing] witness to the passing nature of the present age by their inward and outward separation from the world …. Such a life ‘in the desert’ is an invitation to their contemporaries and to the ecclesial community itself never to lose sight of the supreme vocation, which is to be always with the Lord. (Vita Consecrata #7)
As this quote affirms, there has been a renewed interest in and flowering of the hermit vocation in the last century. This interest has been fueled, at least in part, by the example and writings of people such as Charles de Foucauld, Thomas Merton and Catherine de Hueck Doherty. It may be one response to the increasing secularization of Western culture. It may also be linked to one interesting contemporary phenomenon – more and more adults live alone, at least for some periods of their lives. It is estimated that 40% of everyone 18 and over in New York City lives alone. In the final analysis, however, it is the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who has chosen to call more people to the hermit life as a means of enriching the Church of our time by providing prayerful support to those in other vocations and by the example of their lives.
The hermit vocation remains important in the life of the Church. Now it is possible, of course, for anyone to embrace a hermit life on their own. A good number of people do so. However, because the hermit vocation is important to the life of the Church, the Church as a whole has a role in discerning and nurturing such callings. Every vocation is always given through the Church and for the Church as a whole.
Some hermits are members of religious orders. Indeed, orders like the Camaldolese and the Carthusians include significant aspects of eremitic (hermit) life in their structures. With the increasing numbers of lay people (and even a few diocesan priests) who were discerning a call to the eremitic life, a need arose to find a way to help discern such vocations and determine how someone could be formally recognized as a hermit in the Church. Hence, when the revised Code of Canon Law was issued in 1983, it included a provision that gave a brief definition of the eremitic life and outlined what is required for a hermit to be formally recognized as such by the Church. This is canon 603. It is worth quoting the canon in its entirety:
In addition to institutes of consecrated life, the Church recognizes the eremitic or anchoritic life by which the Christian faithful devote their life to the praise of God and the salvation of the world through a stricter withdrawal from the world, the silence of solitude, and assiduous prayer and penance. A hermit is recognized by law as one dedicated to God in consecrated life if he or she publicly professes in the hands of the diocesan bishop the three evangelical counsels, confirmed by vow or other sacred bond, and observes a proper program of living under his direction.
It isn’t possible to do justice to every phrase in this canon in one blog post, but for now I’ll simply point out a few elements and offer a brief description of them.
“Stricter withdrawal from the world”: No, hermits are not required to catch the next UFO bound for Mars or Pluto! It’s good to recall that “the world”, in Scripture, has two meanings: it can mean the whole universe, all of God’s creation. In other contexts, it can also mean that cluster of attitudes and ways of being that are at odds with God’s will for creation. All Christians are called to be in some way separate from “the world”, in that latter meaning. “In the world, but not of it”. In the case of hermits, however, that withdrawal would normally be a little more obvious than for most people. Here, a hermit is meant to be a more intense sign of a reality that every Christian is called to live. How that plays out can vary widely depending on the specific calling of each hermit. However, one can expect that a hermit will be physically alone a fair amount of the time and live a reasonably ascetic life.
“The silence of solitude”: One does not become a hermit merely because one likes to be alone, no more than one becomes a diocesan priest merely because he likes to be with people or help people. Nor is the eremitic life based on some dislike of people. Those called to this life are being led to what the canon calls “the silence of solitude”. Not merely solitude, because one can be alone and surrounded by external noise (the TV) or internal noise (the ceaseless chattering of one’s mind). The sense here is that the Lord leads the hermit into a kind of solitude where the hermit learns to become inwardly silent in order to wait on the Lord and be ready whenever the Lord should choose to come or to speak.
“Assiduous prayer and penance”: Every Christian is called to prayer, to conversion, to holiness. Although the hermit will not be lacking in kindness and hospitality to others, the hermit’s main focus in life is this daily life of prayer and conversion of heart. It is a gift of self-emptying love, as hermits will rarely know how their prayers become a means of blessings for others. They live, as all Christians do, by faith. Some hermits may take on fasting and other ascetic practices, but only to the extent that these help the hermit become more open to the Lord.
Accountability: In answer to the comments of our priest at the start of this post, a hermit is accountable on at least three levels. First of all, the hermit observes a “proper program of living” under the bishop’s direction. This “program”, or Rule, is written by the hermit, usually after some experience of living the eremitic life. The Rule usually outlines the structure of a hermit’s day and week and how the hermit will live out the basic qualities of the eremitic life outlined in canon 603. This Rule is then submitted to the bishop for approval. Once the Rule is approved, the hermit can be formally professed as such by the bishop, and the Rule becomes the hermit’s own “canon law”, so to speak. Secondly, the hermit is accountable to the bishop. The bishop is the hermit’s superior, like an abbot or abbess on a monastery. It is assumed that the bishop, or his delegate, will meet with the hermit regularly to offer support and to “check in” on how well the hermit is living the Rule. Thirdly, and ultimately, the hermit is accountable to God. The life of a hermit only makes sense if it is the way that the hermit is called to make that total self-gift to God that is also the calling of every Christian. Speaking for myself, it is inconceivable that someone could live as a hermit and not be aware, on a daily basis, of the presence of God and how one is always accountable to God. It would be like forgetting that air exists.
These are only a few comments on the hermit life. I haven’t been formally professed under canon 603 (not yet, at any rate) but I seek to live my life guided by it and by the example of hermits I have read about and have had the gift to know personally. I hope that these few words may help to shed some light on this vocation, and help more people appreciate that it is a gift to the Church, no more (but no less) than every other vocation.
A word on the icon I inserted above. This is an icon of St. Sharbel Makhluf, a Lebanese priest and hermit of the 19th century. One of the icons I have in my prayer room.